100 Words: Broken Head

Stumbling around after the ride I felt like something in my head had broken.  It had round and round so fast it felt like my skull had changed shape and was ready to burst like a shook-up coke can.

And then it was the 50s all of a sudden.  A bequiffed man bumped into me and the strong smell of his cigarette brought me round quickly.  People started noticing me when I swore loudly and I started to panic, wondering how to get back.

But nothing worked.  I waited and here I am hoping I can stop myself from riding.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories):

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

I can't shake the feeling that I have written something very similar before.  Maybe just because I initially write something similar to this before realising and giving up (at 141! Words):

On a roundabout one evening way in my past/sometime in the 90s an older child spun me round and round so many times and I got so dizzy that I have not been able to go round and round or spin in a circle without feeling horribly sick since.  One time I even tried a spinning helicopter ride at Dreamland but was sick during and after the ride.  I can’t spin on the spot or even tolerate someone else spinning on the spot or walking round and round in circles.  I have to frequently ask my son to stop doing so.  Something in my head just broke that day.  Before then I loved the Galloping Horses, as I called the Carousel, now I can barely stand to look at them and stand well back when my son goes on board.  

100 Words: The Two Kettle Chorus

Together they would bubble and steam, the sounds emitting from the room like a chorus calling us in for elevenses and afternoon tea.  Or so we called our tea breaks in those days.  A quick cuppa and a biscuit.

And, after someone remarked that they were like siren calls, the singing began.  Pop songs and folk songs, hymns from our schooldays, even a national anthem or two, got sung as we sat about enjoying our tea, often too wired to have “proper” conversations.

We met there - our eyes meeting, smiles exchanged, as we sung the first line of Autumn Days.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories):

PHOTO PROMPT © Jen Pendergast

100 Words: Welcome to the War

It gave me the heebie jeebies.

From the landing craft we could see smoke blocking the sky.  “Thank God the beaches have been won,” I thought.

Then, as the ramp dropped into the surf, I saw Vesuvius fully for the first time and it looked angry as heck, spewing red hot lava down its flanks and it hit us all in the stomach, made us think of the fire waiting for us.  

For now, though, we hopped to it, marched neatly away.  “Just follow orders, do as you are told, avoid the lava,” I thought.  Right up to VE Day.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Ken Arnopole

100 Words: Sea Fog

It was twisting, rolling up the beach like a live beast.  At the castle it blew across the lawns and over hedges like a ghost horse.  We came for Easter, spring sunshine, lambs and so on.  Instead we got cold and a creepy fog following us around.

It felt like we were stuck in a Victorian period drama, like a seaside Jack the Ripper was waiting at the end of the pier, hiding within the fog, waiting for victims to enter his trap.  We stayed away from the pier.

All in all you could say it was a disappointing trip.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

100 Words: Searching for the Exit

Everything was glass.  Rooms that went on so far that whatever was outside was just a distant blur.  Its existence was only an idea, though, as all I could see was through and that there was no way to leave.

I walked one way, feeling out ahead, met a wall, followed it one direction, then another, and another going on and on and nowhere.  Never travelling far enough to unblur the distant blur.

It was some time before I saw the light.  A flash from an old film.  I screamed as high as I could, shattered everything and woke up.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Nancy Richy

100 Words: The Chips Cupboard

Our classroom was next to the cafeteria so we were nearly fooled.  For that’s how Miss always passed it off.  “It’s the chips, they’re frying the chips for lunch,” she would say when we asked about the bubbling sounds and smells.

Then one day we saw her.  We held back just enough on the way to lunch, and we looked through the window in the classroom door to see her open a cupboard, remove a fryer basket of chips and pour them onto a plate.  

Away we walked.  Astonished, but not surprised.

That’s when I decided to become a teacher.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

100 Words: The Strange Beings

I woke up with strange beings standing over me.  Long bendy arms came from the top of long slender trunks, eyes wide and bright with curiosity and concern; and shocks of hair in wispy bursts.  Nothing more could I make out as the sun hovered right over, clothing them in shadow.  I saw only shapes in that brief time.  

After I awoke in the hospital no one believed me: “Just the trees you were found under.”  Yet no one could explain how I got from the burning train to the top of an almost vertical embankment.  

Or the other survivors.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

100 Words: Tsundoku

He had had every intention of reading every single one of the books acquired and placed ready to read on that desk.  He had had every intention of using that desk to write following the study of those books.  But now he was a tower builder.  Both in his silent study and the playroom full of the clicks and clacks of Duplo being built ever higher until the inevitable collapse.

“One day,” he would often say to the books as he had a look and adjusted the tower to make it safer, playing his endless game of tsundoku. 

One day…

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Presumably written for Friday Fictioneers from a picture prompt but not published at the time (April 2024). 

100 Words: I should remember

I should remember the bar. I should remember the staff. I should remember the drinks on sale.

I remember nothing.

Yet I woke with a glass printed with its name in my hand.

They remember me. They ask me to leave. They say that I am barred. They say I must never return.

I place the glass on the bar, my hands and head empty.

And no one will tell me anything. And no one will look me in the eye. And no one will return my calls. And no one wants to know me.

So what the hell happened?

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

100 Words: Fast Track

The banks of flickering candles hold the prayers of the people, their warmth pushing the wishes high up to heaven.  Each holds a hope or a dream or a wish.  Something that has been asked for, wholeheartedly.

Sitting in a pew a small girl watches others as they pray and light candles, fixing in her mind exactly what she would say if she had a coin.

In her heart, though, she says the prayer.  

Unseen by anyone, an angel sits beside her and whispers that it shall be done.

Moments later, Oliver-style, she meets the couple who would adopt her.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard

100 Words: Pessimistic

The banks of flickering candles hold the prayers of the people, their warmth pushing the wishes high up to heaven.  There the angels sift and sort, arrange thoughts and prayers, wants and desires, wishes and hopes, whether selfish or selfless.  

It is the prayer of a small child that catches the eye the day this story takes place.

But there is nothing they can do.  All the angels do these days is collect, record and file.

The child will have to wait and hope, pray that those in power on earth will change their minds and do something to help.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard

100 Words: Life from Death

The first time I walked to the shop instead of using the car I saw a squirrel standing on the top of a fence taking seeds from the centre of a sunflower and eating them from its tiny hands.

I stood transfixed, watching this intimate and tiny wonder all alone.  Just me on Church Landway amazed by what I was witnessing.

I never looked back, I never fixed the car.  

Now it has bloomed into life, just as I have by walking and taking public transport: meeting people and seeing things that would not be possible while driving the car.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Fleur Lind

100 Words: Grow vines to bypass the walls

Traditions that became ever more iron clad built walls throughout the town keeping its communities apart.  Separation bred hatred and hatred threw stones that injured, maimed and killed indiscriminately.

And so it went on until a watercan, left accidentally on a wall, periodically filled with water and seeds before spilling them onto the ground.

Great vines grew over the walls and curious youngsters began to climb.  Children began to play together, share sweets and be welcomed in for lunch where more and more similarities were found.

New traditions began to grow and word began to spread.

And the walls fell.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

100 Words: Not just another yarn

Hands old and young knitting and clicking, the rhythms making long scarves take shape.  Over the top laughter provides the melody to the erratic beat.

Suddenly, the oldest clears her throat to silence the group before announcing:

Listen and never forget.

When the fascists came we all fought.  I was just 13, but I did my part.  I knew in my heart what my needles could do and what must be done.

She picks up her knitting again, leaving everyone to think.

Slowly the beat begins again, now more rhythmic and in line.  And no one speaks for some time.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

100 Words: The Sad Cardboard Box Jellyfish

Floating across the wall: a picture of a cardboard box upset at being dumped into the ocean and becoming a jellyfish.  It hadn’t asked to become sentient or a living warning of dumping rubbish in the ocean.  It was sad for the ocean and for itself, doomed to forever drift the seas of the earth, with no hope of the end it had always desired: of being recycled.

Until.

A school of fish arrived, broke up into a shoal, and started to feed.  The sad cardboard box jellyfish slowly began to disappear.

It didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

100 Words: An Analogy for the Empire

They never really taught us about empire and no one ever talked about the effects still being felt.  Growing up I only ever heard good things.  The things that were only good for colonists.

While in a rickshaw, I looked forward and watched the man pulling me forward.  Those old, golden days were much like this, I thought - if I’d had a rifle pointed at his head.

Until that moment I had been walking around full of satisfaction, of pride.  It turned to sickness before I stopped the ride, had a brief chat with my driver, and started to learn.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Amanda Forestwood

100 Words: In The Haberdashery of Thoughts and Ideas

Inside the Haberdashery of Thoughts and Ideas I found a book.  A book with a purple cover within which was a collection of photographs for story prompts.  A scattering of joker cards, ancient ruins, a ferry headed for harbour, a strange looking forest - there were so many to see and choose from.  

And each page folded out to reveal stories created from that prompt.  Each concertina with an empty panel ready for more.

They say the book updates itself every week: a new picture, new fictions, from fictioneers, both old and new.

And the name of the book?

Friday Fictioneers.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

My Original The Haberdashery of Thoughts and Ideas: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

100 Words: Turn Left

Turn left, come in, enter my emporium.  Your future I will sell to you.  Visions of most perfect clarity, rendered before your very eye, that will show you your path, make clear what you will have to do.

I entered, I saw, I discovered, I locked the door behind me.  

You see, once revealed, the future is set.  Once seen, it cannot be undone.  Just like the past the future becomes.

But, stuck up in my own head, watching my life again as if on a cinema screen, I cannot warn you of this.

I cannot scream:

“DON’T TURN LEFT!”

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Written for Friday Fictioneers, and ultimately a very short rewrite of this story, from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Rowena Curtin

100 Words: The Explosion Above the Table

There it sat above the table, an explosion frozen in mid-flight, its light casting shadows over us all as we looked on, shocked by the revelations revealed.

Wind back over forty years to that very room.  Five couples, a bowl containing sets of keys, a house of cards being unknowingly built.

I’d always thought I looked a bit like “Uncle” Bill, always felt he treated me a little differently to the others.  That my father was more distant with me.

As the explosion faded and we all came back to ourselves, the tears began to fall.  My new life began.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

100 Words: A basic sketch

I first saw you distorted through a glass - primary colours creating a basic, idealised sketch of you.  A picture in my mind formed before ever trying to discover a person full of intricate details.

Some part of me always knew this but it kept quiet.  That’s why I never listened or took an interest.  That’s why I never asked you out.  I loved an idea of you but never actually tried to know you.

I saw you with your family today, undistorted for the first time; remembered things, realised how incompatible we were.  And I smiled the happiest of smiles.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields